Book presentation: Terror on Trial: An Ethnography of French Courts (Studies on Law and Society Series, Cambridge University Press , 2026)

Through courtroom observation and interviews with judicial actors, the book examines how terror justice is produced in France. Drawing on extensive courtroom ethnography in Paris, Professor Sharon Weill co-directed a multidisciplinary research team examining how counterterrorism logics are reflected, represented, and negotiated in criminal proceedings.

Based on hundreds of hearing days—from ordinary terrorism cases to the so-called “trials for history,” including the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan trials—the book offers a bottom-up perspective on the role of courts in the fight against terrorism. Identifying three generations of trials, it shows how terrorism proceedings are not only repressive but increasingly incorporate restorative dimensions.

The book also provides Anglophone readers with insight into criminal proceedings in civil law systems and, more specifically, terrorism prosecutions in France, highlighting the roles of judges, prosecutors, lawyers, victims, and political actors.
 

Full Professor of International Law (with socio legal approach), Sharon Weill joined The American University of Paris in 2018, where she directs the Justice Lab. She is also Research Associate at the Centre for Comparative Law & the Internationalization of Law at Sorbonne University and teaches at Sciences Po Paris and Paris II University.

She holds a PhD from the University of Geneva (2012) and completed postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley (2015–2016). Her research lies at the intersection of international law, armed conflict, and socio-legal studies, with a particular focus on courts and ethnographic approaches to law. She is the author of The Role of National Courts in Applying International Humanitarian Law (OUP, 2014) and co-editor of Prosecuting the President: The Trial of Hissène Habré (OUP, 2020). She has co-directed two major empirical research projects on French terrorism and asylum courts for Mission Droit et Justice (CNRS/Ministry of Justice). She has also led research projects on the Guantanamo military commissions, and Israeli military courts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In addition to her academic roles, she served as an expert member of the French National Consultative Commission for Human Rights (2018–2021) and as a judge at the French Asylum Court (UNHCR nomination, 2019–2022), and has worked as a legal consultant for the United Nations and several NGOs.